


Myths Found in Coffee Shops

by gouguruheddo



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Clueless Reiner, Fluff, M/M, Nerdy Reiner & Bertolt, Sweating Bertolt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 05:37:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gouguruheddo/pseuds/gouguruheddo
Summary: Annie has two stupid friends that would be perfect for each other. So what else should she do besides set them up on a blind date?





	Myths Found in Coffee Shops

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the Reibert 2017 Secret Santa exchange for freckledskittles on tumblr. This is my first time writing Reibert, and in pure Isayama fashion, I talk about Reiner for 2k words.

Reiner Braun grew up in the small town of Liberio. It was a town nestled within the foothills of the Virginian Adirondacks; the kind of town that the residents lovingly called a village because there was not much there to make it anything more. Once a popular railway town, it fell into being a town of stagnant quiet that rolled along much like the early morning mists in the valleys. The town square was measured in feet and comprised of one general store, a post office that closed at noon, and a library with three rows of books, all that sat along the only road that left in and out of town. **  
**

Life was quiet, and Reiner didn’t know it could be anything more than summer nights filled with the sounds of crickets and jars of lightning bugs. He didn’t know the difference of life outside of three feet of snow and neighbors that lived almost a mile away. He didn’t know about a life that didn’t involve a community, where everybody knew everybody else, where restless mothers with sweating brows caused by heated stoves chatted for hours on phones that still had cords. Where murmurs of the boy without a dad and a mother without a crucifix around her neck was the type of boy you were best to stay away from.

Reiner had been to the city once. He was so small then that he had barely remembered much else besides how tall the buildings had been around him. Like giants, he told his mother, his hand squeezing hers. She smiled down at him and nodded. Told him stories about Greek myths and the great beasts that formed the world. They were called titans, she said. Reiner begged her for more–she had so much control over the knowledge of his world, she might as well had been a god to him at that moment. They spent the rest of the day at the art museum, reading thousand year old stories on old terracotta pots. She bought him a book on mythology that sat with a worn spine on his bookshelf.

The kids turned to teenagers, and Reiner began to fill out his shirts with muscle as his voice grew deeper. He did manual labor throughout the year–chopping wood, shoveling driveways, landscaping. He saved his money and bought books. He saved money because he wasn’t going to be like them. He was going to be different. So many of them were stuck in the foothills, their feet sinking into the soil like old trees, building families before even having a chance to grow themselves. The friends he had were in his books. They were in the mythologies.

His mother brought him to the closest town that had a Wal-Mart to pick up a nice pair of clothing for his high school graduation. She took him to the Waffle House and let him get the All-Star Special. “For my All-Star,” she said, an affectionate grin on her face as she sipped at her light coffee. Reiner was the first one in the family to go to college, and was the only one in his class of forty to leave the state for school.

She was proud.

She was so proud and she said it to him so many times as she helped him move his things into his dorm room. “Eight hours.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m only eight hours away. If you need anything at all, I’ll come get you.” She nodded as she looked into his eyes. Six inches shorter than him, and she still looked so tall–for so long she had been his entire world.

He kissed her cheek back and nodded. “I know, ma. You’re just a phone call away.”

Reiner had no idea. He had no idea how watching her pull out of the parking lot would grip something around his heart so strongly it made him ill. Eight hours felt like an ocean at times. It had only been a few days and he couldn’t bring himself to eat anything at all.

His roommate Connie threw a pack of pop-tart at his face the morning before their first class. “You need to eat something, dude.” The pack fell onto the keyboard of the laptop in his lap.

Reiner ran a hand down his face and blinked a few times. He’d been staring at the schedule of his classes for the past hour, only thinking of how in a couple of weeks, the grass would start frosting in the morning back home. “I will… I will.” He picked up the pack and tore it open, taking a mouthful of both pastries and chewing, crumbs falling from the corner of his lips and landing in the crevices of his keys.

“You play any sports?”

Reiner looked over at Connie. He shrugged. “We didn’t have any sports teams back home.”

Connie laughed. His laughter was always loud but genuine. “What the fuck kinda backwoods place do you come from?”

“Liberio.”

“Where?”

Reiner laughed in response, shoving another mouth full of pastry into his mouth. After he swallowed, he continued. “Yeah. I’ve never played anything outside of touch football.”

“Man, you’d be a beast. You got arms for days.” Connie flexed his muscles and laughed again. Reiner smiled. “There’s open try-outs next week. We should go together.”

Reiner looked back down at his schedule. He had no idea how intense his semester was going to be. He was on course to be a physical therapist eventually–but this semester was full of prerequisites like math and English. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try. It’s not like I’ll ever make it.”

A week later he was Sina University’s football team’s defensive tackle.

Being social didn’t come easy, but people tended to like him. He liked his teammates, and he found himself at parties and tasted cheap beer that never seemed to get him drunk. He kissed his first girl, a short little blonde quiet thing that attached better to the corners of rooms than to people. He followed her outside onto the green lawns that didn’t frost and tried to take her hand. “Let me walk you home,” he said.

He didn’t remember hitting the ground, but it happened and the wind was knocked out of him. He coughed the air back into as she stared down at him. In the night, her eyes looked pale like the moon, and her personality as interesting as a twig. She said her name was Annie, and they became best friends.

Reiner managed well through his first semester. He made good grades while balancing his newly acquired social life. The pain of homesickness was distant at times, but when he went back for winter break, he sat in a pile of snow that made it hard for him to breathe. When he went back inside the house, he watched the steam curl off of his mug of coffee until it ceased. His throat hurt as if he had been talking, and perhaps he had because his mother was smiling bigger than he had ever seen her smile.

“I’m so proud of you, Reiner.”

Reiner finished out his first year on the Dean’s List, and he hugged Connie good bye as they packed up his dorm room to go back home for the summer. “Hopefully we’ll be roomies again, yeah?” Connie stepped back and raised his fist for a fist bump.

Reiner accepted with a nod. “Totally.” He dragged Connie back into a hug before closing the dorm room door behind him.

Summer was lonely, and he found that he missed school like how he missed home. Annie came to visit for a week, and they went hiking and camped at the peak of a mountain in order to watch the sunrise. “This is beautiful.” She said.

“It’s home.” Reiner said softly. He looked down at Annie and he had seen so many movies that plotted like this. He was supposed to reach out and hold her hand. They were supposed to kiss. In this special moment, overlooking the most important place to him, he was supposed to react.

Annie matched his gaze, her eyebrows downcasting. The golden sun caught her pale skin and outlined her in neon. Reiner supposed she was beautiful in all her unique features, but he didn’t feel anything. “What are you looking at?” She said stiffly.

Reiner looked forward, and the sun crept up the sky so immeasurably, it seemed to be stuck in time. “Nothing.” He said.

The next semester started, and Connie was once again his roommate. He juggled through practice and games and studying and classes, and somehow having regular hang-outs with Annie. He told her about the blonde cheerleader that always looked at him. “I think she really likes me.” He said, biting into a mediocre school burger.

“Nope.”

“What?” Reiner covered his mouth with a napkin when he realized he was losing pieces of food from his gaping mouth.

“She’s gay.” Annie said, matter of factly.

“No way.” Reiner swallowed. He’d never really known anybody that was gay. “She doesn’t look like she would be.”

“What, does she have to wear a sign around her neck or something?” Annie rolled her eyes and dropped her fork next to her salad. “Listen. I know somebody you should try out.”

“I’m fine.” Reiner sighed. It’s not that he didn’t want to experiment with relationships. Despite being an outcast for so long, college turned him into somebody new. He’d become the big brother to his team, even helped tutor some of them when they needed it. He already had too many social obligations as it was. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend.”

“Just trust me. They’re a mega nerd like you and your weird… Mythology obsession.”

Reiner raised an eyebrow and nodded. With a gentle laugh, he took a gulp of his water before nodding again. “Fine.”

Annie setup the date at the school coffee shop. She had a few instructions: wear the red letterman jacket, get there at 2PM, and don’t try to be a gentleman and take the bill. “Most importantly,” she said, “Be yourself.”

And it was at that time that Reiner forgot how it was even like to be himself. Back home, he had been a recluse. He kept himself busy with carrying logs and sleeping under the stars. He had worlds inside his head with monsters that made storms with their breaths and created mountains with their bodies. At school, he found himself to be whatever people needed him to be. He sat at the metal table picking at a callous on his palm, feeling more homesick than he did when his mother first left him here–a whole ocean away.

He tapped his phone awake. 2:13. His eyes wandered across the cafe, to the entrance, then back at his phone. 2:13. He sighed and hung his head.

Eren and Jean had called him their big brother. Armin helped him drill down the difference between sins and cosines. Connie stayed up late with him watching movies from the early nineties that Reiner had never seen. His friends were part of who he was now, but is that all he was?

2:18. He paused and stared at the tall man sitting at the window–skin that matched the color of his mother’s coffee, hair deep as mocha. Reiner looked back down at his hand and picked at a scab on his index finger.

He was about legends and giants and worlds so large and vast that they couldn’t contain his size. He was going to be greater than anything that came out of that small little town.

2:25. Reiner gasped a little when the tall man matched eyes with him. His eyes were sad, his brow withered in worry, and they darted away as soon as they met. Reiner shook his head, agitated that he had been stood up by this mystery girl, and rose from his seat. The legs of his chair screeched on the concrete floor, and his shoes squeaked as he passed a few tables and stopped in front of the tall man.

“Hey.” Reiner said. He didn’t have to tilt his head too far down to look into the sitting man’s face. He turned his attention to the man’s coffee cup, and saw it to be empty, a dark pool of mocha remaining at the bottom of the mug.

The man startled so abruptly that his chair wailed under him. “H-hey.”

“Looks like my date stood me up.” Reiner said, pulling the chair opposite out and taking a seat. “You look like you could use some company.” Reiner landed his elbow on the table and extended his hand. “Name’s Reiner.”

The man looked at the hand as if it were a cobra, the soft sheen of sweat at his forehead shining under the large lamp above the table. He raised his hand and connected firmly with Reiner’s and shook it once. His palms were sweaty, and it made Reiner smile. “Bertholdt.”

Reiner took back his hand and folded his arms across his chest. “What are you doing here lookin’ so glum?”

Bertholdt shrugged.

Reiner hummed. He looked Bertholdt up and down, studied the size of his nose, the color of his eyes, and found himself focussing oddly on the length of his neck and how the tendon tensed every time he swallowed. The white polo collar that popped out from under the teal sweater set him apart from the jocks he had grown accustomed to hanging out with. He was one pair of glasses away from being a nerd.

“There’s an exhibit going on at the art museum about Irish folklore.”

Bertholdt searched Reiner’s face and a smile cheated across his lips. It reminded Reiner of home somehow. “That sounds nice.”

“Wanna go?” They stared at each other for a few more moments before Reiner added, “I mean, I left today open for a date, and now I’m bored so…” Reiner shook his head, slapping a hand to his forehead. “N-not that it’s a date. Jesus.”

Bertholdt relaxed into his seat and laughed. It reminded Reiner of summer nights with jars full of lightning bugs. “That sounds fun.” He lifted his hand up and fingered the curve of the coffee mug handle. “But I’ve already been to it.” He smiled, and it looked strained but eager to remain on his lips. “How about we go to the natural history museum instead?”

Reiner smiled big, his teeth showing. He thought of books with worn spines, and wondered if Bertholdt had any of his own. “Sure.” He nearly spit it out, the excitement thrumming in his chest. “That sounds great.”


End file.
